The present invention relates to method and apparatus of a location assurance system and particularly, although not exclusively, the present invention also relates to method and apparatus for assuring location data integrity with minimum location disclosure. The present invention also relates to method and apparatus for assuring location data integrity with minimum location disclosure with protocols to authenticate both spatial and spatio-temporal predicates.
Since the boom of smartphones and location-based services, spatio-temporal data (i.e., user locations with timestamps) have become an essential input in many real-life applications. To ensure to these applications that the data are genuine from the underlying location tracking hardware and not altered by any malicious party (including the user himself/herself), the integrity of location data has to be authenticated by schemes such as digital signature or message authentication code (MAC). However, these conventional schemes disclose to the verifier the complete plaintext location and thus completely expose the user location and jeopardize his/her privacy. Thus, there is a need for an integrity assurance scheme with minimum location disclosure.